Making magic fairer in WHFB 8th

[warplock]

Magic is supposed to be fun, but most of all I think it can be charactised as unfair. All too often 1 of 2 things will happen:
1) A wizard gets an IF off which is crucial to the game, suffers barely any ill effects, and the enemy army is crippled or completely routed from that one spell (purple sun, dwellers etc).
2) A wizard rolls conservatively but still gets boxcars on two or three dice, the spell doesn't do much, the wizard dies from the miscast and/or takes out a lot of his unit with him, putting the army behind by 250 - 500 points with that one spell.

I get that some element or randomness is required, but these results are far too common and often lead to pointless games where the outcome is literally decided by one lucky or unlucky roll. Of course, the dice can go against you at any time, but magic seems to be the main offender, and, specifically, IF. Normal rolls can be countered by a scroll and/or tactical dispelling, but IF has no counter, making it all the more frustrating.

Of course it could be argued that the spells themselves are the cause of the problem, and I totally agree, but I'm not suggesting rewriting the spell list, that is far too complicated. Nor am I saying IF should not exist at all - I think if it were rarer, it would be much more palatable. The simplest solution I can think of is increasing IF to triple six. This way wizards can cast low level spells on two dice without risking their lives, and IF would much rarer but still play a part in the game.

Any thoughts, or suggestions of other ways to make magic fairer?

[theunwantedbeing]

Remove the uber spells and the issues with magic disappear.

[Last Edition]

Removing the uber spells solves nothing, only introduces new problems... I do think triple 6s for miscast/IF seems like a very simple and elegant way in solving this problem. Another solution (for the latter problem at least), which are already available within WFB rules, is to never leave home without the Earthing Rob on your lvl 4.

[theunwantedbeing]

What other problems?

[Memnos]

What other problems?

For one, it reduces the number of options for dealing with Deathstar units. Why, if you removed those level 6 spells, people might be inclined to do something silly like putting half their points in a single unit. As it is, nobody would ever do that as it would be a huge risk.

Hahah. Sometimes, I like to imagine I'm in an alternate universe where people who field death stars complain bitterly about the level 6 spells when the obvious answer to them is not to take massive hordes, but that would be silly as there is such an obvious answer to the big spells: If you'd lose the game if you lost a unit, then that unit has too much invested in it.

[theunwantedbeing]

What sort of deathstar units are you specifically thinking of?

Chosen?
In5, so purple sun isn't a lot of use
St4, so dwellers isn't too scary for them
Wo1, so Funal transformation isn't that scary
Easy access to 3+ ward saves so the enemy using Occams mindrazor on them isn't a big problem, plus they do have prodigeous combat abilites anyway and can often shred such opponents long before they have a chance to bring their full weight of attacks so mindrazor just doesn't help

Note that not everyone has access to all those spells at all times anyway.
What if I wanted to take beasts/heavens magic on my mages? What do I do now?
I'm screwed according to you if the other guy has a deathstar.

[Memnos]

What sort of deathstar units are you specifically thinking of?

Chosen?
In5, so purple sun isn't a lot of use
St4, so dwellers isn't too scary for them
Wo1, so Funal transformation isn't that scary
Easy access to 3+ ward saves so the enemy using Occams mindrazor on them isn't a big problem, plus they do have prodigeous combat abilites anyway and can often shred such opponents long before they have a chance to bring their full weight of attacks so mindrazor just doesn't help

Note that not everyone has access to all those spells at all times anyway.
What if I wanted to take beasts/heavens magic on my mages? What do I do now?
I'm screwed according to you if the other guy has a deathstar.

I'm uncertain. When I said you had 'fewer options', how did that become 'you're screwed'.

Do you believe that's what that phrase means? Or are you possibly arguing that you don't have fewer options for dealing with those deathstar units? I don't want to argue against something you didn't say, so I'm hoping for clarification.